How Many Calories Do You Burn During Sex?
Have you ever wondered how many calories you burn in bed?
Sex is a wonderful thing. It’s nearly universal for humans and all sexed animals. Most of us love it and try to get it in where we can. You know, between our hectic work schedules, commutes, family time, and possibly even our gym time.
And while we tend to think of the gym as the place where we get our best workouts, even a layperson who’s totally ignorant of fitness can take a guess and conclude that sex can be quite a workout.
Not only does it require a lot of physical exertion — sometimes lifting our partners into the air and moving them around or contorting our bodies into an unusual position that rivals the plethora of available yoga poses — but it also gets our heart rate and blood pressure up quite a bit just by the very nature of us being aroused. When we climax, our heart rates and blood pressure elevates to levels akin to actually working out in the gym.
According to Harvard Health Publishing, the heart rate can get up to 130 beats per minute, and blood pressure can raise to 170 systolic blood pressure (the upper number of the two). Blood pressure usually rises to 160/90 during sex for most people.
This is the same as a light-to-moderate workout, for those who don’t typically keep track. Oftentimes, when I do some light cycling, my heart rate hovers at around 137 beats per minute, meaning that sex is almost as strenuous as cycling.
One woman even wore her Fitbit during a sex session to see how her body fluctuated during each portion of the session, and the results were rather interesting.
She posted them on Reddit along with labels for each portion of the sex sesh.
As you can see, her peak heart rate was 123, and it fluctuated during the 8-minute session until the cool off when it dropped back down.
But how many calories did she burn?
Well, she probably burned 24.8 calories during this session, which is about as much as a brisk fifteen-minute walk.
A 2013 study titled Energy Expenditure during Sexual Activity in Young Healthy Couples gathered participants and compared workouts to see how many calories would be burned, both on a treadmill and during sex.
Participants were asked to wear an armband that measured their energy expenditure during both.
They then compared the numbers and got the following results.
Men burned an average of 4.2 calories per minute during sex for an average of 24 minutes (including all types of sexual activity), and women burned 3.1 calories per minute during the same period.
For men, the total number of calories burned was 101 calories during the 24-minute sex session, on average. For women, the total number of calories burned during the same session was 69 calories, on average.
During the treadmill exercise, which was 30 minutes long, men burned 276 calories and women burned 213. This actually tells us quite a bit. While the treadmill exercise was longer than the sex sessions, on average, this tells us that sex is just a bit shy of having a moderate-intensity workout.
For the woman above, if we take the average of 3.1 calories per minute and multiply it by 8 minutes, we get 24.8 calories. While this is just the average and is thus an approximation, it can give you a good idea of how much energy you’re expending during sexual activity.
Finally, I know what to log with my Apple Watch after each session.
If this doesn’t seem like enough calories for the sex you have, there are some things you can do to make sure you get a better workout during each session.
You can beat the average calorie-per-minute burn by having more vigorous sex. You can extend the duration of your sex and have longer sex. And if both of those fail, you can always relax for a few minutes and gear up for round two, having sex again after your sex.
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Three books I recommend checking out:
We know what that 10 minute "workout session" at 945pm really is. I workout in order to have the stamina for sex. Train hard, play well.